ANGELS’ TROUT SHOWING WHY SCOUTS LIVE IN HIT-AND-MISS ENVIRONMENT

You can always tell about tools. A stopwatch will show you if a kid can run. Radar guns are a reliable gauge of throwing ability.

If finding ballplayers were as simple as identifying the best athletes, you could perform most of your scouting on a spreadsheet.

You might never miss if they didn’t have to hit.

“That’s definitely the hardest thing to predict,” Padres General Manager Josh Byrnes said Wednesday. “College bats have been down because we’ve signed so many kids out of high school. … And it’s tough to find a slam-dunk high school prospect.”

The Padres’ continuing search for high-impact hitters resumes Monday with the First-Year Player Draft, an event that rivals the quest for the Holy Grail (Monty Python’s version) for false steps and ultimate futility. Not since the 1973 selection of Dave Winfield has the Home Team spent its first-round draft choice on an elite, enduring position player and their recent history has been beyond horrific.

Shortstop Matt Bush, the No. 1 overall selection in a 2004 draft that also included Justin Verlander and Jered Weaver, was being retrofitted as a relief pitcher when he was confined to a Florida jail on March 22 on seven charges related to an alleged hit-and-run accident.

Donavan Tate, the No. 3 overall selection in 2009, carries a .225 batting average for the Padres’ Single-A Fort Wayne TinCaps, and has not hit a home run since 2010.

Worse, the second high school center fielder selected in 2009 was Mike Trout.

The 20-year-old Trout has been one of the breakthrough talents of this baseball season — a swift, acrobatic rookie who has helped the Angels regain relevance after a sluggish start. Just promoted to the big leagues on April 28, Trout is hitting .303 with five homers and eight stolen bases and he covers ground as if he were being chased by a cheetah.

Playing left field Tuesday night in Anaheim, Trout raced into the gap and reached over the wall to steal a home run from the Yankees’ Nick Swisher in the second inning, approximated a blur en route to a third-inning triple and made a diving stab of a sinking liner by Curtis Granderson in the ninth. Trout makes tracks so quickly that he creates suspense in routine grounders and turns seen-it-all scouts into salivating spectators.

“You’ve got to kick yourself when you’ve (had) a chance to get a guy like that and didn’t,” Byrnes said.

Byrnes gets to kick himself in stereo. He passed on Mike Trout twice.

Then the general manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Byrnes spent the 16th and 17th selections of the 2009 draft on high school slugger Bobby Borchering and Notre Dame outfielder A.J. Pollock. The strikeout-prone Borchering has yet to escape Single-A. Pollock has hit .229 since he was promoted to the Diamondbacks on April 18, and projects as a fourth outfielder.

Trout, the 25th player picked in that June draft, projects as a superstar. Or, as Angels teammate Torii Hunter put it, “a freakin’ stud.” If Trout’s bat lagged behind his legs and his arm at Millville (N.J.) High School, he now has enough tools to accumulate some serious hardware. Asked to identify what player he would choose if he could have anyone over the next 15 years, Byrnes picked, “the guy you just mentioned.”